Posts by Geoff Campbell 1888 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jun 2008
Capitalism has always been corrupt, it's baked into the model at a fundamental level. Hell, it's even right there in the name - capitalism is all about the flow of capital, i.e. money.
There was a time when some constraints were placed on just how viciously pure that could be, but those disappeared some time early last century, I think.
GJC
As with all such definitive statements, that's not entirely true. Certainly tabs are much overused for general spacing of paragraphs, for which there are many better mechanisms available using paragraph properties.
However, tabs do have their place. I use them frequently for laying out headers and footers, for example, where there are typically two or three objects that require placing at left and right margins, and perhaps one centrally.
GJC
The basic analysis seems spot on, although I don't think there will be any awards handed out for deep new insights as a result.
But if we change, what then? I'm good at what I do *precisely* because of the psychological damage inflicted in earlier life. Write me out of the script, or force me to change into some touchy-feely advocate of technical excellence by consensus vote, and all my hard-won and passingly valuable skills of in-depth analysis and abrasive truth-telling based on empirical evidence disappear.
Let's face it, deep technical IT skills are pretty much diametrically opposed to good people skills. And you know what? I'm comfortable with that.
GJC
Once again, for the hard of thinking - I have not expressed any opinion on the outcome of the referendum, and very specifically have not said that the outcome was wrong or right. The whole process was stupid, but that's politics in the 21st century.
I view the whole thing with a sort of detached amusement, much the same as the current US election.
GJC
I didn't have a strong opinion either way. It is quite possible that the status quo is the worst option. The point being that I didn't have anywhere near enough decision to make an informed decision, so I took the option to not make a decision. I am mildly disappointed, although not surprised, that more people didn't take the same action.
This should all be seen in the light of my *extremely* cynical and low opinion of pretty much all modern politicians and their motives, which was significantly strengthened by the opportunistic calling of a populist referendum just to grasp onto power for one more term by David Bloody Cameron.
GJC
Get ta fuck.
First, I did abstain. I said at the time that this whole referendum was nonsense, asking us to vote on a subject that only those who had a full-time involvement in politics or economics could fully understand. So I took the conscious, definite decision to abstain.
You do not get to appropriate my vote. Had I been in favour, I would have voted in favour. I was not, so I did not. That's how democracy works.
GJC
sudo killall -9 Autopilot
Quite so - "better than the meatsacks" is a very low bar to clear. More importantly, should it turn out that kids in stripey jumpers are an edge case, every autonomous car will learn about them within minutes.
Try that with human drivers. Just getting them to admit that they aren't perfect drivers is an impossible task.
GJC
Certainly if sites could settle on a universal set of rules for passwords that would be very nice. I use a password generator these days to make up unique 20-character passwords for each site, and even so I occasionally have to tweak the settings as some sites don't like some of the characters it uses.
GJC
Perhaps counter-intuitively, war has pretty much no effect on population numbers. Dig out any world population graph, and you will have real problems working out where the really big wars happened.
WW3 might be rather different, of course, now that the headbangers are in charge.
GJC
I suspect that the 80 day journey time relies on the extra fuel that will be loaded in orbit. If you're relying on the fuel you've boosted out of the gravity well in the initial launch, there's a bunch less thrust available.
Bottom line, I can't see them getting something as fundamental as the journey time wrong.
Oh, and sign me up, would you? Sounds like a lot of fun.
GJC
> In an article about the birth of the iPod, Steve Jobs said: That’s not what
> we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is
> how it works."
Which is fine, except that Apple spent, and still spend, *vast* resources on the look and feel, and the initial advertising for the iPod was all about that external look with pretty much no mention of function.
GJC
Yes, I think there is plenty of He2 and He3, although I'm no expert.
But the plan is to turn water and CO2 into Methane and Oxygen using solar power, for a whole bunch of very good engineering reasons around fuel handling, combustion, and ease of implementation.
Fusion might be useful for spaceflight in the far future. Basing a plan that starts now on it would be somewhat, erm, brave.
GJC
Nah. Big fireworks are fine, so long as you don't try and do the whole lift in one go. Hence, get to orbit, reassemble/refuel there, then go for it. I've been saying for decades that if the Apollo programme had done the same, we'd've got to the moon a bit later, but we would still have been in space today.
I think Musk's approach should work, so long as the new engines can be made reliable enough. As far as I can tell they've cracked most of the technology problems already.
GJC
I'm looking forward to the Surface Phone. It might be good, it might be shit, but it'll be trying something different, and that is to be applauded in the currently fairly stagnant market.
I have reasonably high hopes for Continuum, as someone who travels a lot and works on lots of different sites, but again, it might work, it might not. That's how innovation works, surely?
GJC
> Tesla is losing about $1B per year
Tesla have spent vast wodges of cash on building infrastructure recently, mostly the Fremont and Nevada factories. As all young companies with any sense do.
They are going into the approaching fight with a massive advantage, in that they can build their own battery packs, because of that expenditure. This will make the profits per car very different to that of their competitors.
GJC
I had that discussion when I was looking at a Model S (sadly couldn't afford it, in the end).
They recommend a service every 12,500 miles, but there's no warranty requirement, and they were quite happy with once a year even at 40,000 miles per year. I guess there's pretty much nothing to service, really.
GJC
I think it needs a good re-packaging, tuck everything away nicely to create room for a small boot at the back, and at the same time redesign the rear end to make it rather less eye-searingly ugly.
So, a good first step, certainly. If they can produce one with room for three bags of shopping, and some means of fuelling up (perhaps a solar/wind powered electrolysis plant at home?), it would make a good second car for our use.
GJC
iOS uses AES 256 bit encryption, as I understand it. This is essentially uncrackable with current computer architectures. From Wikipedia:
"Breaking a symmetric 256-bit key by brute force requires 2^128 times more computational power than a 128-bit key. 50 supercomputers that could check a billion billion (10^18) AES keys per second (if such a device could ever be made) would, in theory, require about 3×10^51 years to exhaust the 256-bit key space."
GJC
I like Windows 10. Yes, I know, I'm weird like that...
The add-ons were nothing exciting - Bluetooth headset, webcam, external microphone, and a mouse. That latter might come back into the fold, but the touchpad on the SP4 is much nicer than the one on my Asus laptop, so it might not.
GJC
Apple, remember, is the company that swore blind they would never produce a phone bigger than 3.5".
I've just bought a Surface Pro 4. It has allowed me to clear out of my briefcase:
A laptop
An 8" tablet
An A4 pad
Three pens
Sundry laptop add-ons
A USB charger (there's one integrated with the SP4 PSU)
It's a very, very nice device, and Microsoft are to be commended for having usefully combined the tablet (for referring to stuff in meetings), the notepad (for jotting stuff down), and the laptop (for proper long-form writing/spreadsheets/etc. on the move).
In fact, if I hadn't just upgraded my desktop, I might also be tempted to buy a docking station and use it for that, too.
About the only thing that will stop it sweeping the market is the price, I think. Fine as a business tool for those who move around a lot, but too expensive for the mass market. It will be very interesting to see how the sales stack up against the iPad Pro in 12 months time.
GJC
I left secondary school in 1983, and there was no hint of any computing on the curriculum, at least in our slowly sinking cesspit in Woking. The school did have three computers (ZX-81, BBC B, and RM380Z), and a maths teacher with a perpetually puzzled look on his face whenever I tried to talk about programming them. I think I was about the only pupil in the school who knew anything about programming, all of which was completely self-taught.
I did attempt to take Computer Science at A Level, but me and the lecturers didn't really agree on much, so I bailed out after the first year and got a job as a programmer.
GJC
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
